Hackman, Gene

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    How to Care for a Loved One With Dementia: 5 Expert Tips

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    Gene Hackman was cared for by his wife in his final years. Her unexpected death highlights the essential and challenging job of those who care for Alzheimer’s patients.The details of Gene Hackman’s final days may never be known. But officials in Santa Fe, N.M., said on Friday that it appeared that Mr. Hackman, who had advanced Alzheimer’s as well as heart disease, had spent about a week alone after his wife, who was his caregiver, died at home of a rare viral infection.Mr. Hackman, 95, may have been among the most famous movie stars of the 20th century, but his circumstances point toward a common challenge, according to experts in dementia and family caregiving. Like Mr. Hackman, about seven million Americans have Alzheimer’s, a type of dementia, and their family members, like his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 65, often help care for them as the disease progresses.Laura N. Gitlin, a behavioral scientist at Drexel University who researches ways to support caregivers, said that when a patient is diagnosed with dementia, their loved ones rarely receive all the information they need.“No one really explains to the family what the course of the disease may look like, how to prepare,” she said. “No one checks in on the caregiver.”Knowing how to prepare for this situation can help improve the quality of life for not only patients, as they adjust to life with the disease, but also those who become devoted to their needs. Here are five tips to consider if you become a caregiver for a loved one with dementia.Stay social.People with dementia may feel uncomfortable or anxious around faces they don’t recognize, and stigma can lead some families to retreat from social life. But becoming reclusive can worsen the disease, said Dr. Helen Kales, a geriatric psychiatrist at the University of California, Davis. Isolation can accelerate cognitive decline and even puts caregivers at a higher risk for developing dementia themselves.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Is Hantavirus, the Rare Disease That Killed Betsy Arakawa?

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      Ms. Arakawa, the wife of the actor Gene Hackman, died from the effects of a disease often caused by contact with droppings from infected rodents.Betsy Arakawa, the wife of Gene Hackman, died from the effects of hantavirus, a rare disease often caused by contact with droppings from infected rodents.Hantavirus does not spread among people in the cases found in the United States. It can be transmitted through rodent saliva. But it is most commonly transmitted by breathing in particles of dried deer mouse droppings or urine.At first, hantavirus causes flulike symptoms, including fever, chills, body aches and headaches. But as the disease progresses, respiratory symptoms develop and patients can experience shortness of breath and then lung or heart failure.Here is what to know about hantavirus.What is hantavirus?Hantavirus refers to a family of viruses that are carried by rodents. It is often transmitted to humans by inhaling particles from dried mouse droppings. In North America, Sin Nombre virus is the most common form of this virus, said Sabra L. Klein, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.As of the end of 2022, 864 cases of hantavirus disease had been reported in the United States since surveys of such cases began in 1993, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The “classic” case of hantavirus is contracted by someone who has visited a rural cabin that has a rodent infestation, said Emily Abdoler, a doctor and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School.Hantavirus has flulike symptoms at first.Hantavirus can cause flulike symptoms that appear one to eight weeks after exposure to droppings from an infected rodent, according to Dr. Heather Jarrell, New Mexico’s chief medical examiner. Later, patients often experience shortness of breath and then lung or heart failure.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Morgan Freeman Honors Gene Hackman at Oscars

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      Morgan Freeman honored Gene Hackman at the Academy Awards on Sunday, opening the telecast’s in memoriam segment by saying that the film community had “lost a giant.”Last week, Hackman, 95, and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 65, were found dead in their home in New Mexico. In recent days, the question of how they died has consumed Hollywood and bewildered the community of Santa Fe.Freeman appeared with Hackman in the 1992 western “Unforgiven,” which won Hackman his second Oscar, and the 2000 thriller “Under Suspicion.”“Like everyone who ever shared a scene with him, I learned he was a generous performer and a man whose gifts elevated everyone’s work,” Freeman said.Calling Hackman a “dear friend,” Freeman noted that the actor often said that he did not think about his legacy but hoped that people would remember him “as someone who tried to do good work.”“So I think I speak for us all when I say, Gene, you’ll be remembered for that, and for so much more,” Freeman said.The producers of the telecast had only a few days to decide how they would honor one of the giants of acting. On Wednesday, law enforcement found Mr. Hackman’s body in the mud room of his home outside Santa Fe, next to his cane and sunglasses. Ms. Arakawa’s body was discovered in a bathroom, near an open prescription bottle and pills scattered on the countertop.An examination of Mr. Hackman’s pacemaker indicated that the actor had died on Feb. 17, the Santa Fe County sheriff said. A detective wrote in an affidavit that Ms. Arakawa’s body had shown signs of decomposition and that Mr. Hackman showed signs of death “similar and consistent” with his wife.It could take weeks or longer for investigators to piece together a timeline as they interview the couple’s contacts and wait for toxicology results and autopsy reports. More

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      Mystery of Gene Hackman’s Death Brings Grief and Bewilderment to Santa Fe

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      Residents mourning Mr. Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, are consumed by the unusual circumstances surrounding their deaths and why they were not discovered sooner.Settling in for a drink the other night at Jinja, the restaurant in Santa Fe, N.M., that Gene Hackman and his wife dined at and had invested in, a group of patrons decided to honor the couple by ordering a round of “Gene’s Mai-Tais” off the menu.But in the days since Mr. Hackman, 95, and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 65, were found dead on the floor of their home, the toasts and tributes have been freighted with a sense of bewilderment over the circumstances of their deaths.Mr. Hackman was found dead near his cane in the mud room of their secluded home just outside the city, and Ms. Arakawa was found on the bathroom floor, next to a counter with pills scattered about. One dog was found dead in a nearby closet, while two others were roaming on the property, and data from Mr. Hackman’s pacemaker indicates he died nine days before the couple was discovered.Now, Santa Fe, a city of 89,000 people that has drawn artists and cultural figures for decades, is grappling with a macabre mystery: How did two of their most famous residents die, and how could no one have known for so long?“You can’t help feeling guilty that you didn’t call him,” said Stuart Ashman, a friend of Mr. Hackman’s who met him on a committee of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe in the late 1990s. “You sort of take for granted that your friends are where they are and everything is status quo.”Among both those who knew Mr. Hackman and those who had never once seen him around town, theories about what might have happened were piling up.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      “The Royal Tenenbaums” Introduced Gene Hackman to a New Generation

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      His performance in Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” introduced Hackman to a new generation, and his presence helped define the film.When the director Wes Anderson and the actors Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray and Gwyneth Paltrow took the stage in 2011 for a panel celebrating the 10th anniversary of Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums,” there was no need for small talk before addressing the elephant in the room.“So, no Gene Hackman?” began the director Noah Baumbach, the panel’s co-moderator, introducing an apparently genuine nervousness into the discussion.Hackman, who was found dead on Wednesday afternoon with his wife at their home in Santa Fe, N.M., at the age of 95, loomed over “The Royal Tenenbaums” in every possible sense.Within the film, of course, he is the paterfamilias — he is Royal Tenenbaum, “the displaced patriarch,” as Hackman put it in an on-set interview — of the remarkable, scattered family at the center of Anderson’s third film, the one that took him from art houses to the mainstream.That 2011 panel dived into Hackman’s presence, particularly an off-camera gruffness, that distinguished him from the whimsy typical of Anderson’s work. Here was the avatar of 1970s grit and paranoia — who had won an Oscar playing the bad-boy narcotics detective Popeye Doyle in “The French Connection” — dropped into a very different type of cinematic vision, from a very different generation.The tone throughout the panel, particularly from Anderson, was respectful and appreciative. But it was clear that Hackman stood out on set. At the time of filming “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Hackman was already considering a retirement that just a few years later he announced and stuck to, Anderson said. None of the panelists had been in touch with Hackman during the intervening years, they said. And they all remembered him being terse with Anderson.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gene Hackman and the Pugnacious Nature of Surprise

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      He could be both paternal and terrifying, and had the ability to almost goad you into liking men who would otherwise be despicable.When you first see Gene Hackman in “The French Connection,” he’s wearing a Santa suit, conversing with a bunch of kids. It’s a jolly image that runs counter to what we’ll soon come to know about Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, the porkpie-hat-wearing detective that became one of Hackman’s most notable roles. The Santa disguise starts to peel off as he leaves the children behind to sprint after and brutalize a perp. Kindly Santa, this man is not.But that was the extraordinary power of Hackman, who was found dead Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe., N.M., at the age of 95. Throughout his long career — that was somehow too short, thanks to a conscious retirement — he mixed warmth with menace. He could be paternal as well as terrifying, sometimes all within the same film.Hackman often played men doggedly pursuing impossible goals despite looming threats and their superiors telling them to back off, but there was a doggedness about him, too. He had a pugnacious ability to almost goad you into liking guys who would otherwise be despicable, be they criminals, cops or just absentee fathers. Despite their often unsavory behavior, Hackman made it fun to spend time with these people, even if you might not want to encounter them in real life.Hackman never quite made sense as a movie star. When he was cast alongside Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), the movie that would net him his first Oscar nomination, that became obvious. While Beatty as one of the eponymous robbers was smooth with a luscious mane of black hair, Hackman’s Buck Barrow, Clyde’s brother, was jittery and balding — but no less an entrancing and terrifying presence, with a livewire energy that felt genuinely unmoored.“Bonnie and Clyde” cast members, from left: Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and Michael J. Pollard.Bettman, via GettyHackman routinely inspired the use of the term “Everyman” in articles, but that seemed like an incomplete way of capturing his appeal. In 1989, The New York Times Magazine qualified that description by calling him “Hollywood’s Uncommon Everyman.” Twelve years later, The Times described him as “Hollywood’s Every Angry Man.” He was an Everyman with an asterisk.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More